Wyndsong Writes

I found this great site called The Sister Project which is dedicated to all things sisterly, be it actual blood sisters, friend sisters, or any other kind of sisters you can think of.   Well, one of the blogs is written by Marion Roach who teaches a class on writing your own memoir called “Writing What You Know“.  But on The Sister Project she is giving tips, tricks and prompts to help write your story about you and your sisterhood, whatever that is.

Sisters and Brother

On this particular prompt called “Side Dishes: Let’s Write It All Down” she suggests writing about sisters and the holidays.  Being a little sister, actually the BABY sister (and I do mean BABY by 9 – 16 years) I have a lot of experience with sisters… 37 years worth of experiences.  I have a brother who is 12 years older than me, and two sisters one who is 16 years older than me and the other is 9 years older than me.  We lived together all my life, but my two oldest siblings have a different father than me and my other sister.  Although they are technically “half” siblings, they never felt like it.  Then, on my father’s side I have two other brothers tha are also “half” siblings.  I didn’t meet them or my father until I was in my 30’s.  I have a sister-in-law through my brother, and had one while I was married but I haven’t spoken to her since I divorced my husband.   Then I have my best friend who is like a little sister to me.  I also have sisters in the Craft of the wise, and other mommy blogger sisters  all of whom I share my stories, my life, my path, and my heartbreaks with.  All of this gives me a lot of sisterhood to talk about.

The whole point of this particular prompt is to answer these questions: What’s your sister like around the holidays?  Does she insist on her relish? Burn the turkey? Or worse, do everything perfectly?   How about the topic of gifts and what they are. What gifts from your sister have been a recognition of who you both are?

These questions got me to thinking about my oldest sister and holidays.  I mean, we all love holidays, but my oldest sister, Cindy REALLY loves them.  Each and every single holiday is ultra important to her.  I think part of it is because of her medical history, she was told so many times through out her life that she wasn’t going to live very long, so with that kind of thing hanging over  your head I’m sure every single  holiday becomes more important because you never know when it’ll be the last one you have.  Of course, she’s lived long past all of the doctor’s doomsday predictions for her, but it’s still that dark cloud hanging about.  Then there’s also the fact that she can’t have children, and holidays are really mostly about kids and getting all the kids in the family gathered (read corralled) into one spot.  And believe me there are a TON of kids in our family and it keeps growing!

There are some holidays that are more important to me than others, like Christmas… I love Christmas, I loved it more when my sons were still little enough to believe in Santa, but I still love it.  However, holidays like the 4th of July aren’t so important to me.  I like them enough to want to maybe have a BBQ, but I’m not really in love with fireworks.  I hate the loud noises, I’d preferr to watch them on TV or from afar.  My sister Cindy, however gets extremely upset if she can’t see fireworks on the 4th.  This can present a problem now that we’re living in Las Vegas and my mom and I are the only family out here, and neither one of us like fireworks.  Luckily, Las Vegas tends to have TONS of fireworks all across town, so driving around the valley you get to see the largest longest fireworks show ever… all from the noise free comfort of my car!

When it comes to other holiday traditions, the ones that most of our family members love the most center around food.  My grandmother and her generation started a lot of tradtional dishes for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and those traditions have been continued on down to this very day.   On the Christmas & Thanksgiving table there always has to be sweet potato balls and some fruit salad and for Easter we have to have Chicken in a Basket (recipies to come later).   There’s one Christmas tradition that my sister Cindy insists on and that’s Chocolate Covered Cherries, in memorium of our grandfather who passed away 20 years ago.  No one else really likes them, even Cindy doesn’t really like them, but she always has to have them to remember Grandpa by.

One of the other questions in this prompt asked about gifts.  This is something that I’ve gotten upset with my sister about quite a lot, especially as I got to be an adult with children.  Generally, because we have such a big family, Christmas presents are reserved for kids.  However, while my sons and I were living with my sister, Cindy & my Mom, we’d have smaller Christmases and we’d all get each other presents as well as the boys.  Cindy generally forgets how old I am, or at least that’s how it seems sometimes.  Instead of getting me a nice pretty adult watch, my sister bought me an R2D2 watch.  Now, albeit, I’m a Star Wars fan, I don’t generally want Star Wars memorabelia for Christmas presents.  On occasion there have been some limited edition or unsual Star Wars things that I’ve wanted, but not just any toy or item with Star Wars stamped on it.  And yet, year after year, I’ve gotten some Star Wars toy for birthday or Christmas, that has ultimately ended up in my sons toy boxes.   I know that it is “The thought that counts” and when she sees anything Star Wars she’s thinking of me, but I just wish sometimes she’d think of me when  she saw a pretty blue sweater or a computer gadget of some sort.  Part of it is also she still wants to think of me as a kid instead of pushing 40 (did I just say that?  Pushing 40? wow!), and she’s in her mid 50’s now.  That’s certainly not easy either.  So although I have gotten mad at her, I try to remember these things in the moment.

As I’m writing all of this down I realize that my sister Cindy has had the biggest impact on my life of all my siblings.  Mostly because I have lived with her the longest.  I’ve lived with her as a child and as an adult with kids, so we’ve spent more time together, for better or worse, than my other sister and brother.  Which is nice that I”m so close to Cindy, but kinda sad that I don’t know my other sister as well.  Although GiGi and I are very similar in a lot of ways, we’re also very different.  My brother is a whole nother story that I won’t get into here, suffice it to say that we were once close, when I was very little, and we’ve grown further and further a part over the years, and now I hardly know him at all.  I used to think that the reason I had such a hard time with my oldest sister, Cindy, so much was because she used to treat me like I was her child instead of her sister.  I think really, that although our relationship has always been the best, I’m still very close to her, and I’m very grateful for that.  I’m glad that I have a sibling that I’m close to, even if it’s sometimes too close.